


The Impossible Boy

by Notsalony



Series: Cold Time [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 07:43:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7968277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notsalony/pseuds/Notsalony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Len sacrifices himself but does this mean death?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Impossible Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This should make chapter 3 of Unlikely Bonds make a little more sense. This is set after it because I like complicated things.

Len grinned at the Time Master in front of him.  His hand already going beyond itchy to feeling the very cells of it burn and fall away, lost in the stream of time.

“There are no stings on me.” He glared as the flames took him and he knew in that instance that he would never see Barry again.  And the ache in his heart gripped him tight and he felt a pull as he landed in a glass box.  He looked around at jars of liquid that seemed to be standing in the middle of the room he felt confused.  Wasn’t he just dying.

“Test 04 beginning.” Gideon’s voice came over the speakers outside the room.

“What the FUCK!” Len screamed as waves of orange energy flooded the chamber from every direction.  He felt himself being torn apart and the floor became some sort of liquid under him.  He felt himself sliding down through the universe.  Time and space seemed like a bad acid trip happening in reverse around him.  He reached out and pulled a piece of paper off the wall as he fell through this place that didn’t make any sense.

Down and down he went lost in the flood of light and sound and darkness till he seemed to come back to himself panting and clutching himself.  His insides feeling like they were melting and tearing apart he looked around and realized he was in Star Labs.  He frowned as people he didn’t know scrambled through the halls.  When did they get this many people here?  He started to ask someone something and he felt the grown pitch under him and the explosion of the particle accelerator happened, hitting him with a wave of energy and as it hit he melted back into the wrong side of time.

He was sitting in a bar talking to Mick, but not past Mick, he knew it was an older version... the one who watched him die.  He struggled to tell him he wasn’t dead... But his voice wouldn’t work he just frowned and looked confused at what was going on before he was suddenly in a new location.

He was clutching someone, a man, on horse back.  He recognized Jonah Hex’s voice complaining about how much he was pissed at Rip.  He watched the town burn from the horse over looking it.  In the back of his mind he knew he was the only person that Jonah had managed to save from the town.  A drunk and a thief, and he wondered if he was worth saving.  His whole body hurt as he fell out of that body and found himself watching a young Rip being taken for his first lessons as a Time Master.

“Are you sure this one?” One of the Time Masters looked at Rip.

“I’m sure.” Len smiled.  “He shows great promise.” He turned and looked at the other Time Master, realizing it was the one who’d watched him burn in years to come.  And he felt himself fall out of that life and drift some where else.

He was a 16 year old kid being beaten up in Central Star City.  Some meta human punks where beating up on him because of his power and he looked up as they vanished only to be replaced by Barry standing there offering his hand.  The nearly immortal Flash, the President of Star Corp that owned this country and ran Central Star City. 

“Thanks.” Len felt himself blushing and realized Barry was going to out live him by a long ass time if he was this far into the future.

“Not a problem.  What’s your name?” Barry leaned down, his costume not hiding his face since everyone knew who he was now.

“Leo.” Len hadn’t went by that name in years.

“Well Leo, don’t let them pick on you.  Every power is as important as those with out powers.  A dear person to me once told me that we all have to just keep trying.” Barry smiled as he looked down into Len’s eyes, with no clue who he was talking to.

“Barry I...” Len fell out of the body as Barry heard Len’s voice in that moment and called after him but he was back in that dark place, openings opening and closing around him so rapidly.  He grabbed on to the nearest one and found himself trying to freeze Barry to death in the middle of the street as Mick tried to burn him alive.  Their aims about to cross and Len had a moment to flinch as the streams crossed and he felt himself being thrown back against the pavement.

The world was back to that spinning never ending storm of lights and sounds.  He was suddenly laying on his back, blood spilling from his belly and his lips, his armor ripped up and he saw Savage’s army ravaging through the country side.  He saw them pulling down the statue of Barry and tried to get back to his feet before a solider saw him moving and hit him in the back of the head once again putting him in the storm.

He was standing in a loft apartment, shirtless in sleep pants confused as to where he was, until he noticed Barry standing in front of him looking hopeful.

“Where?” Len frowned.

“We don’t have long.  Listen Len, you’re a meta now.  You have to take control of your powers or you’ll drift forever.” Barry was turning nobs on various displays and settings of the electronics that were stationed around the apartment.  “Took me years to figure out what you meant by this and then when I figured out it was tonight I just had to turn this damn thing on.” He smiled.

“Where am I?”

“More like when...”

“Daddy?” A sleepy little boy with wavy black hair and honey colored eyes looked up at Len and Barry.

“Honey, Daddy and I will be in to tuck you in in just a bit.”

“Okay.” He waved and turned around.

“Who...” Len felt himself slipping like the ground under him was vanishing rapidly.

“Take control Len.  You have to take control...”

He was trying to focus but thinking about being a meta human made him think about being at the reactor and he was suddenly falling through mid air as the wave of the dark mater and exotic mater energy waves passed through the city.  He felt himself phase out of time and space and he was being thrown farther and farther from the blast sight until he landed on his knees in a bombed out looking Central Star City.

“The fuck is going on.” Len stopped, throwing his hands up over his mouth and getting up to look in the nearest mirror.  He was half the age he had been when he first met Barry.  He gaped at himself and realized his cloths were tearing apart as they caught on fire.  Putting them out he looked around and noticed the nearest thing seemed to be a silken blue harem stile clothing for men.  Frowning he realized that what ever time he was in they clearly wore this sort of half wizard half dirty harem dancer costume for their down time.  He picked it up and was about to try to leave when a bomb landed on the building.  The explosion rocked the building and it came down on Len’s body.

He stood up and realized he’d stood up through the building.  Breaking it out from where he’d been standing when it came down.  His entire naked flesh now made of some kind of organic metal.  He stretched and pulled himself free of the wreckage, his new cloths still clutched in his arms protected by some sort of layer of the same metal, as if they were a part of him now.  He thought about it and made the metal melt back into him until he was standing in the warmth of the night naked and confused.  He was about to try to get dressed again when someone pulled a trigger and reacting on instinct he threw his hands up and in a burst of cold and water he found himself sitting in a barren wasteland.

“What the fuck is going on?” Len all but shouted as he pulled his cloths on.  Noticing a piece of paper stuck to his foot.  He pulled it off before putting on his shoes, looking at the design with confusion.  He knew he had seen the paper some where.

But the symbol didn’t mean anything to him.  He slipped it in his pocket for later and made his way through the night time desert knowing he needed to find some form of shelter before sunrise because he wasn’t about to be caught with out supplies in the desert.  He walked and walked till he noticed a stone out cropping.  Walking to it he managed to make it there just before the start of blue hour and slipped inside the cool blackness.  He had thought about staying up to think about what was going on and trying to puzzle out where and when he was, but when he sat down and put his back against the cold lime stone like wall he instantly went to unconsciousness.

He woke some time later, a little shocked nothing had attacked him or killed him in his sleep but as he looked around he realized there really wasn’t anything out there.  Not even a single animal.  Frowning to himself he decided to see if he could find some water.  Absently wishing he had his cold gun to make some ice and let it melt for water later on.  He put his hand on the cool wall of the cave he was in and jumped back as ice formed around his hand.  He looked at it and watched it start to melt in the heat.  He quickly bent down and drank from the running water of the melting ice as he tried to wrap his head around what he’d just done.  After a decent amount of what had melted he stood there and frowned.

“Okay, so I’m a meta.” He looked down at his hands and tried to think about the metal skin and felt it swim up through him like he was sweating on command, but instead he was suddenly made of living metal.  He punched the wall and watched his fist sink in and crack the wall as he pulled it back out.  “Okay... So metal skin....” Len had to focus hard to turn back to normal.  “But the wall didn’t grow ice last night.  And I doubt it grows just because it’s day time...” He touched the wall and when nothing happened he tried to retrace his thoughts, the ice, and his gun and, he realized the wall was getting rapidly colder where he touched it till he pulled back and watched ice form in the wake of his hand.

“Great... Frost powers and metal skin... Not entirely sure how that works.” He frowned and thought about how young he was in the last time point he remembered.  Reaching out he tried to make a sheet of ice as reflective as he could and jumped when he saw he was still that young.  “Okay... So I some how moved through time and...” He frowned.  “Barry said I needed to learn to control it or I’d be stuck.  I can time travel on my own now...” He wasn’t sure what to think about to get that to turn on.  So far it seemed to be an extreme reaction to fear.  Maybe it was a fear reaction, his version of flight over fight.  He tried to think of the wave rider, the feel of moving through time and the most terrifying moment of his life at the same time, only to find himself on the wave rider as Kronos shot at them.  Oh fuck if he’d known then what he knew now... He ducked into a hall and tried to think about that cave and moving through time and fear and felt himself falling into the sand outside the cave.  Apparently he wasn’t so great at teleporting in space so much as time right now.  He nodded to himself and decided to go out and search for food.  Sure that if he had to he could just jump through time and get a bite to eat some where near where ever this was.

Where ever.... He paused as he looked up at the red sun behind a wall of electric looking ice that was the sky.  Not where, when.  He wasn’t great at moving through space right now, not on purpose.  The last place he’d been was Central Star City in the fall of the city corp when Savage had been in power.  That meant that this was Central City.  His city... Just a LONG ass time into the future.  He grumbled to himself about the red sun and the strange force field like sky and decided to look around.  He noticed that there seemed to be a pillar of the electric like ice coming down towards the ground some where over the horizon.  So he started walking that way, absently wishing he could teleport line of sight like Shauna could but hadn’t failed to find that power in his new wheel house he’d walked till he saw the remains of a large metal structure that seemed to glow with the same energy as the sky.

What ever it was had been put there long ago.  As he walked around the round building he found a rusted square that had to have been a door at one point.  Touching it it tried to slide open but he had to transform into his metal form to force the door open.  Inside looked like a disused space aged way station just waiting to be put to use.  Displays came on and started reporting in a language he’d never seen.  Frowning at it Len hunted and looked around till eventually he saw some English written down.  He skimmed the entry realizing he was in a Thanagarian out post.  But there wasn’t anything in English saying what it did or why it was here.  Frowning at it all he realized there was only one real way to figure out what happened here.  He moved back outside and tried to get into a far enough away place that it was out of the way of anyone coming and going to and from the base before he felt himself drift into time like letting go of a muscle he was keeping clenched.

It wanted to drift randomly pulled here and there but he tried to keep himself in the moment and started directing it backwards, watching time roll back and away off of the structure till there were winged warriors around it, and the base was looking new and shiny.  Then he watched the sun drift farther away and turn yellow again, before eventually watching the device being shut off.  He waited till he was mostly anchored in this moment of time and slowly walked up and when he went to open the door instead he slipped through it momentarily loosing control over his anchor in time.  So he could phase through matter when he was outside of time.  Nice to know.  He walked around and the translator that Rip had given him began to kick in.

“Stupid hairless apes.” One of the guards chuckled.  “They can’t even begin to understand what we’ve done.  Setting up a hyper space by pass relay point on their planet and sentencing them all to death makes it to where they’re not our problem anymore.  We just have to make sure none of the stupid hairless apes doesn’t screw this all up.” He sighed.

“Hey at least it’s not on the front lines this time.  This is an easy gig.  Inside of six months and the whole planet will be dead and then we can leave.” Len starred at them.  He wondered if he should try to change history but he figured if he tried here it might create a ripple that fucked with his understanding of his powers.  He waited and watched and got a feel for the controls and their lay outs.  The side effect of his powers began to become apparent when he realized years were rolling by and he wasn’t getting older.  He waited till they were all outside waiting on the sun to turn red as it was dragged closer as the gravity wells created by the hyper space gateway being open all the time in Earth’s atmosphere to make his move.  Sliding back into normal time he took one of their data cubes and encoded a message and information for Barry.  He had to make his way back to Barry and let him know what was going on.  And it wasn’t until he was looking at the strangely familiar crystal that he remembered where he’d seen it.  A stranger in a blue cloak had given it to Gizmo back when Len had showed up to talk about the alterations to the time line.  Smiling to himself he knew exactly where to try to go to.  He walked down to where the market place had been and slid backwards in time till he felt he was maybe in the right place.  Jumping out in full metal form he stood up and let it melt back to normal flesh.

“Gizmo...” His voice half broken from the scream of drifting so long in time and space, he was so happy to see Gizmo again.

“Do I... know you?” Gizmo stepped closer.

“Yes... No... Yes...”

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to see the rest of the ending scene go read chapter 3 of Unlikely Bonds and you’ll see where this ends up and joins the other story line.


End file.
